The sun kings of climate change

par Philippe Bovet,
juin 2007

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met in Paris in January, it stressed the urgent need to respond to climate change. Everybody realises that, as former French president Jacques Chirac once put it, “our house is burning down”. If we are to live in a way that respects the environment, our leaders must set an example.

The first oil price hike of 1973 hit the United States hard. Although President Richard Nixon considered a massive renewable energy programme in 1974, his successor, Jimmy Carter (1977-81), took the first practical step. The aim of his Solar America programme was that 100% of US energy should come from renewable sources by 2050. He demonstrated his commitment by installing solar thermal panels on the roof of the White House in 1979 to provide hot water.

Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, dismantled the equipment. As the German MP Hermann Scheer pointed out, this was unsurprising ; the cowboy president’s campaign had been funded by US oil companies.

Germany’s green model

Germany’s commitment on some environmental issues is unmatched, as its political establishment has demonstrated. After reunification in 1990, the government commissioned the British architect Norman Foster, who has long integrated energy-saving into his projects, to renovate the old Reichstag parliament building in Berlin. The Bundestag is now 85% powered by renewable energy.

Foster’s team use three principal techniques. There is cogeneration, which uses the same engine to generate electricity and heat from biodiesel produced near Berlin. The small plant operates at more than 80% efficiency, compared with only 35% for coal-fired or nuclear power stations. Then solar photovoltaic panels, which convert light directly into electricity, cover 3,600 square metres of the roofs of government buildings in the vicinity. And during the summer a geothermal heat sink circulates cold water from the subsoil to keep the Bundestag cool. The building is a demonstration model for clean, decentralised energy ; it is wasteful to transport energy from a distance, with losses along the way, if it can be produced and consumed locally.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel told a press conference in March that at home she had replaced her incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving equivalents : “If everyone in Germany switched to fluorescent bulbs, that would prevent the emission of an extra 6.5m tonnes of CO2 every year.”

Since April 2005 the official residence of the Japanese prime minister in Tokyo has been powered by fuel cell, a non-polluting technology that generates electricity according to demand. Since the equipment was installed as part of a project to develop the technology nationally, it was logical that the head of state should demonstrate his personal commitment.

France’s sacred roofs

What about the Élysée palace, official residence of the French president on the fashionable rue Faubourg-Saint-Honoré in Paris ? During the campaign that led to his election, Nicolas Sarkozy was among the candidates who signed the ecological pact drawn up by the celebrity ecologist Nicolas Hulot. France might have expected from him a promise along the lines of : “I commit myself to reduce my air miles by half and to make the maximum use of videoconferencing. I will break with precedent and make many of my short and medium-length journeys by train, transport that is significantly less wasteful of energy and public monies than official planes. My official car will no longer serve as an advertisement for luxury French gas-guzzlers ; and the courtyard of the Élysée will no longer be a gigantic parking lot.”

He might also re-examine the energy privileges (planes and cars) enjoyed by senior government officials. There are plenty of examples of their bad behaviour. Anne-Marie Idrac, president of the SNCF, France’s national rail company, was due to board a test run of a new high-speed train last December. Spurning the conventional train laid on to take guests the 80km from Paris to Château-Thierry, the start of the run, she joined the minister of transport and company executives from RFF and Alstom, in a helicopter. (Fog prevented the chopper from taking off and the high-speed train completed a successful run without her.)

André Vallini, MP and president of the departmental council of Isère in southeastern France, said in January : “The increasing urgency of politics leaves less and less time to reflect, to step back from events, from economic and social developments... The need for speed and instant answers is the enemy of in-depth analysis... Without the calm necessary for political decisions, long-term thinking is impossible.”

Vallini is often a motorist in a hurry, held up by traffic jams. Grenoble, his departmental capital, has a good public transport system. But Vallini is pushing for the construction of a bypass round the north of the city and has proposed the revival of the air link with Paris, although it is under three hours away by train.

The RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens) believes that its responsibility for public transport in the Paris region exempts it from energy economy, which is a pity, because it is France’s 10th-largest electricity consumer. No trains run between 1am and 5am, but lighting and escalators are left running across the entire network during this period, on the grounds that some stations need to be cleaned or maintained. Lighting represents half of a station’s average electricity consumption. In most stations there isn’t a switch to turn out the lights when the trains stop running. Since the RATP uses the same power supply for its underground trains and for its stations, the latter blaze with lights throughout the day.

Decision-makers and representatives must set good examples in their personal lives and in the buildings for which they are responsible. Solar panels, thermal or photovoltaic, might be an eyesore on the Élysée, but we have to adjust and respond to contemporary environmental problems.

Nobody complains about the aesthetic impact of air-conditioning units on the roofs of public buildings. Solar panels are not new on official buildings : in the German town of Freiburg-im-Brisgau, the town hall, a 16th century building faithfully restored after the second world war, has managed to cover 140 square metres of its roof with photovoltaic panels without destroying its character. Such an installation at the Élysée could be an important national symbol, ushering in an age of renewable enlightenment.